I was just starting to raise my hands to stop his explanation, it was the end of a long expedition, I was mellow, I didn't care much about who was right and wrong as long as we all got down and out. I had no need for apologies or any conflict, this wasn't Hollywood after all. But I didn't get to say all that and he didn't get to finish what he was saying. There was the strangest wind.

I didn't believe there was anywhere to run or any use in finding a way to run. By then we seemed to have our arms around one another — me, Alison, Jody, and the Camera dudes, Jim and Mike. We were all saying things and stepping this way and that in our huddle on our little island as everything began to shake and quiver. All at once the ice slopes above us disintegrated, collapsed, disappeared and evaporated. This happened fast, but not so fast that there wasn't time to see it all and be a little scared. It wasn't an avalanche from high above, the wind had been from the tons and tons of ice falling into the depths of some void beneath us and displacing air through so many crevasses, which had themselves been collapsing and filling at the same time.

Just how many tons of ice was it? Don't worry about the numbers, take my word for it, we are talking Hollywood. It was big. And it kept going. I watched the ice just a few feet from our island crumble and move toward us. but just a little toward us, since it was mostly falling straight down into itself. And then it all stopped. We were standing there untouched and alive and I was looking at what had become a virtually level "step" in the mountain.

There was a ladder stretched within the mix, too. A ladder. A piano wire of a rope. And Ben. All at this ridiculous angle, down off the edge about 15 feet and above the new surface by about 35 feet. And Ben was yelling, "I'm Okay." But I didn't think that he was.

I thought Ben was pretty far from okay, but there was one good thing about him. He was visible. My first worry was for all of the people I could no longer see that had been between Ben and us. They were surely dead by that moment.

I took a step to the edge of our island and looked at all of that ice. Not snow. Glaciers aren't made of snow. Ice. Truckloads of it, densely jumbled, hiding whomever it had just killed. I looked back up at Ben, bouncing and swinging on that rope. I didn't have the faintest idea of how he was going to get either up or down. Surely the rope would break or the anchors would give before anything could be done to help the poor guy. What to do first was a puzzle to me.

Should I rip off my shirt and flex? No. Should I dig into my pack and get the video camera out to record Ben's imminent demise? It would be award-winning footage. I could maybe sell it to Cops or Funniest Home Videos or some other "reality-based" show. But I worried that it was morally wrong for the lead guide to simply play the bystander while something bad happened. So, no camera for this scene which was straight out of the movies. I began trying to climb through the rubble toward Ben.

Early in our expedition, to while away the time at Base Camp, Ben had found this big boulder to work out on. I kept nagging him to be careful, don't hurt yourself out playing when people are counting on you to guide them... Ben promised to be good. I went with him one day to check up on him. I even tried to do a little bouldering so that he wouldn't just think that I didn't trust him, but my pencil arms weren't good for much and I just ended up watching Ben. He has arms that stretch from now 'til next Tuesday.

Sitting in our dining tent, he was always surprising strangers by reaching about nine feet down the table to pass catsup or mustard. And when you'd see him do that, or watch him boulder, you'd notice that those arms have big and functional muscles on them.

I remembered all that up in the Icefall as I watched him swinging in the air, but thinking of the bouldering put me in mind of the skeleton we'd found on that same day. Out on the lower glacier we'd seen old ladder parts and ropes and tent pieces and human remains. Just a few broken bones, really, but undoubtedly belonging to some Icefall climber from long ago. The man had not died of old age.

Ben still may though because as I tried to get to him on the morning of the collapse, he cranked up those big arms and saved himself. First he dropped his pack, which was pulling him upside down, then he got an ascender onto the piano-wire of a rope and then he just hauled himself back up to the edge by brute strength. I shook my head in wonder knowing that if I were in his spot I'd simply be left waiting for global warming to reduce the glacier to workable proportions.

By the time Ben had gotten himself free, I'd been in touch with Lisa, and Lynn and Kim on the uphill side of the wall. I knew they were there and not in between, and every now and then, I'd see another of the Sherpas poking his head over the edge to look at the drop-off. I just still wondered how many of them were in the debris. I wasn't having the best of luck getting across that debris to check.

					"Impossible that with 25 of us, essentially in the same stretch of glacier, that a 100-foot section of it could simply vaporize leaving only the most capable guy hanging....."